As a Lord of the Rings fan, I'm not too enthused by this. The main character suffers from the same problem as Starkiller from Star Wars: The Force Unleashed - he's bland, he doesn't fit into the storyline, and he's too powerful. From what I've seen, this Talyan guy is matched only by Sauron and the wizards in terms of his supernatural power.

This seems like an attempt to shoehorn an Assassin's Creed style gameplay concept into Lord of the Rings. I feel like Middle-earth is better suited to an open-world RPG or maybe a Dark Souls style action game with more tactical and deliberate combat, as opposed to crazy sword ballet.

Gameplay looks potentially neat, but I can't help but be underwhelmed by the impact of the dialogue/character interaction. Hopefully, procedural content generation doesn't mean flavor gets white-washed.

EDIT: In other news, I'm still like 100% certain the wraith is Morgoth, so it'd be nice if that wasn't "the twist." Maybe make the whole thing take place in the Animus, instead.

After watching a bit further, the combat seems lifted directly out of the Batman games. There's an excessive amount of gore. And the main character's powers are not canonical. I'm surprised the Tolkien estate is allowing this.

Looks like we could finally be seeing a decent entry as far as games in the Lord of the Rings series. Open world for me sounds interesting, although it looks like it borrowed heavily from Assassins Creed. Not saying that will make it a bad game but seeing enemies stand around and everything kind of made me go uhhh this again. I will reserve judgement I am sure that it will turn out to be ok.

Some of the animation and move set seems straight up lifted from Assassin's.

EDIT: Yesterday, Aleissia Laidacker (a team lead at Ubisoft) commented on Twitter how a lot of the animation is basically from Assassin's Creed. The tweet has since been deleted though the remnants of it can still be found in some replies to people responding to her initial tweet. By the way, in the original tweet she wasn't at all negative about it.

Give me this mechanic in elder scrolls, fallout, or mass effect. I think it'd be nice if not every interaction had to end in violence. Why can't I just have an intellectual spy game or something like that.

Some of the animation and move set seems straight up lifted from Assassin's.

EDIT: Yesterday, Aleissia Laidacker (a team lead at Ubisoft) commented on Twitter how a lot of the animation is basically from Assassin's Creed. The tweet has since been deleted though the remnants of it can still be found in some replies to people responding to her initial tweet. By the way, in the original tweet she wasn't at all negative about it.

It looks pretty cool but I gotta say the similarities between moves and even the environment (those cables he walks over are literally straight out of AC games) are somewhat unnerving.

The main character suffers from the same problem as Starkiller from Star Wars: The Force Unleashed - he's bland, he doesn't fit into the storyline, and he's too powerful.

You can tell that by watching this video?

Did you miss the part where he uses his wraith powers to pound the ground, creating a shockwave of ghost energy that knocks the enemies over?

That's magic, son.

Magic in the Middle Earth universe?! Incredulous!

C-. You've mastered the structure of a sarcastic comment but you haven't done a very good job of researching the subject to make sure you aren't making an ass of yourself.

There are three wizards in Middle-earth at the time when this game takes place. Unless this guy is Radagast in disguise, he cannot use magic.

But the wizards are not the only ones capable of magic, are they? I mean, there're magical abilities throughout Middle Earth, as far as I know. For instance, Frodo keeps going invisible whenever he puts on the ring, which I would say is a magical ability and he's no wizard. And, in this case, I thought the main character had a ring from one of the wraiths, giving him their powers. Makes sense with the powers like the eagle vision, although I don't know whether wraiths were capable of Saruman's handprint-thingy but I don't think it's ever been said whether Saruman was the only one capable of it, or was exclusive to wizards.

I have to say, I was laughing as soon as he started climbing, and then when he tightroped his way between structures on the exact same cables that exist in the AC series I thought WB Games was pretty shameless. Being a fan of the AC series, though, I'm quite happy to play the same game in Mordor. I want to see more of this controlling other people through your handprint, though, as it seemed a bit like it was only part of the storyline. If you can build up your own army that would be pretty rad.

@moregrammarplz: He's matched by Sauron, Tom Bombadil, The Wizards and The Wraith King. And of course a lovable hobbit with a lust for adventure. Still I'm not even that big into LOTR and think this looks kinda lore shattering.